COPYRIGHT 1997 The Independent Institute. Permission is granted
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Wedded to old modes of thinking, defense policy makers resist change
in the face of new realities. Though the Cold War has ended, the Soviet
Union has disintegrated, and Communism no longer menaces the world, the
United States and Russia continue to maintain enormous strategic nuclear
forces on alert. Why?

Nuclear weapons pose horrible risks. The detonation of even one large
H-bomb would demolish the largest city, killing millions. The detonation
of 10 or 20 such weapons would cause unimaginable devastation to an
entire nation.

Yet each side maintains thousands of nuclear weapons. Even when the
START I agreement of 1991 is fully implemented, the United States and
Russia each will deploy more than 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads.
Under START II, signed in 1993 but still awaiting ratification by the
Russian Duma, each side would reduce the number of warheads to just
3,500 -- far more than enough to destroy civilization.

Russia's parliament resists ratification of START II in order to
compensate for the drastic deterioration of Russia's conventional armed
forces. But nuclear weapons are poor substitutes. With an appropriate
"aid" package the United States probably could bribe the
recalcitrant Russians into greater cooperation in arms reduction.

A larger question is whether the carefully calibrated tit-for-tat
method of arms reduction continues to make sense -- indeed, whether it
ever made sense. Once the arms race was begun, it became
self-sustaining. Applying the doctrine of mutually assured destruction
(MAD), each side wanted more warheads and more accurate and reliable
delivery vehicles because the other side had acquired more warheads and
more accurate and reliable delivery vehicles. Striving to get or stay
ahead, by the late 1980s each side had accumulated more than 10,000
strategic nuclear warheads plus thousands of tactical nuclear weapons.

That the world somehow managed to survive the past half-century
without employing these weapons must be credited largely to sheer luck.
Besides the close calls occasioned by stupid political leadership, such
as the Cuban missile crisis, the mere existence of these massive
arsenals created serious risks of accidental or unauthorized launch of
weapons with catastrophic consequences.

Unfortunately, dismantling nuclear weapons now gets little public
attention. Never comfortable thinking about nuclear war, ordinary
citizens allay their anxieties by assuming, contrary to fact, that
because the Cold War has ended, they are no longer at risk.

Recently, however, a wake-up call has come from a surprising source.
Last December at the National Press Club, U.S. Air Force General George
Lee Butler highlighted the urgent need for new thinking by calling for
complete elimination of nuclear weapons "as the only defensible
goal." Formerly the head of the Strategic Air Command and its
successor Strategic Command, Butler speaks with authority. "The
risks posed by nuclear weapons," he declares, "far outweigh
their presumed benefits."

The day after Butler's speech, 61 retired generals and admirals from
17 nations, including 19 Americans and 18 Russians, issued a statement.
Declaring that nuclear weapons "represent a clear and present
danger to the very existence of humanity," they called for
reductions much greater than those slated by START II. "In the
post-Cold War security environment," they stated, "the most
commonly postulated nuclear threats are not susceptible to deterrence or
are simply not credible." Thus "business as usual is not an
acceptable way for the world to proceed in nuclear matters." The
ultimate aim should be no nukes.

Is this proposal workable? Guardians of the status quo say no. The
Pentagon insists that the missiles must stay on alert. Brookings
Institution analyst Richard Haass calls Butler's ideas a "dangerous
delusion." Former defense officials Ashton B. Carter and John M.
Deutch argue that "reducing nuclear weapons to zero is not
practical or desirable until there is assurance that all nations will do
so."

Of course, some "experts," especially those institutionally
and ideologically committed to the theology of nuclear deterrence, will
always insist that we have no such assurance. Demanding complete
assurance makes no sense, however, because continuing to maintain
nuclear weapons is itself enormously risky. Butler attests to an
"appalling array of accidents and incidents" in the past.

Although defense policy makers continue to resist new thinking,
Butler believes that striving to set the world on a path toward the
elimination of all nuclear weapons is not utopian. "We forget too
quickly," he says, "how seemingly intractable conflicts can
suddenly yield under the weight of reason or with a change of
leadership." The military leaders now urging the abandonment of
horrifying instruments of mass murder deserve our gratitude for their
valuable contribution to the crusade for sanity.